mrsronweasley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mrsronweasley) wrote2003-07-04 11:48 am
mrsronweasley) wrote2003-07-04 11:48 am
Happy Independence Day -
A fitting day to be thinking about what America means to me, which is what I did today in the car on the way to pick up an errant air conditioner for my sister.
You see, we were driving on the highway, and it was all so familiar. It was all so achingly familiar - the road signs, the roadside, the trees and the grass on either side of the concrete, and the cars on the roads. It's so familiar, and it had been home for me for all of nine years, until I came to England. I realize now that I do love America, but only for what it has done for me - not for it now, or in the future. I am forever grateful that it provided a life that, no matter how difficult may have been at times, was so much easier than it had been in Russia. I am grateful for the friends I have found, for the ideas I have encountered, for the freedom that I have had, and the opportunities that it has presented. It has allowed me to be myself, something that I might not have been able to do in Russia. But I also realize now that I have been taking it, all this time, as a temporary thing, a substitute until I found myself in a place where I truly belonged, heart and soul, and that was the place I found when I came to England. Everything here feels hollow right now. What had been my life before is now an even more temporary solution, a way of getting back home. Home home. I look around, see the buildings, see the people, and more than anything, I feel this ache to get back to where I was just a week ago. I think about the roads in Ireland, the stone walls, the grass fields, the old cottages and everything that I see here loses its color. But it's good. It's good because I know where I belong now, really know. And I will make it back there, I know I will. I once wrote in this journal, sometime in August, that I felt like I was standing on the edge of a change, of something so important that I only had to step over the line and nothing would ever be the same. It turned out to be completely true. Seems strange now, how scared I was of going to England, excited though I was. It'll be a relief to get back there now.
And right now I just have to get used to the idea of being here, remember what life was like before England. I know I can do it, especially since I know that it is temporary.
So, happy Independence Day. It's funny how my own independence was won in England, huh?
You see, we were driving on the highway, and it was all so familiar. It was all so achingly familiar - the road signs, the roadside, the trees and the grass on either side of the concrete, and the cars on the roads. It's so familiar, and it had been home for me for all of nine years, until I came to England. I realize now that I do love America, but only for what it has done for me - not for it now, or in the future. I am forever grateful that it provided a life that, no matter how difficult may have been at times, was so much easier than it had been in Russia. I am grateful for the friends I have found, for the ideas I have encountered, for the freedom that I have had, and the opportunities that it has presented. It has allowed me to be myself, something that I might not have been able to do in Russia. But I also realize now that I have been taking it, all this time, as a temporary thing, a substitute until I found myself in a place where I truly belonged, heart and soul, and that was the place I found when I came to England. Everything here feels hollow right now. What had been my life before is now an even more temporary solution, a way of getting back home. Home home. I look around, see the buildings, see the people, and more than anything, I feel this ache to get back to where I was just a week ago. I think about the roads in Ireland, the stone walls, the grass fields, the old cottages and everything that I see here loses its color. But it's good. It's good because I know where I belong now, really know. And I will make it back there, I know I will. I once wrote in this journal, sometime in August, that I felt like I was standing on the edge of a change, of something so important that I only had to step over the line and nothing would ever be the same. It turned out to be completely true. Seems strange now, how scared I was of going to England, excited though I was. It'll be a relief to get back there now.
And right now I just have to get used to the idea of being here, remember what life was like before England. I know I can do it, especially since I know that it is temporary.
So, happy Independence Day. It's funny how my own independence was won in England, huh?